Associate Director - Airport Sector Lead

Overview

Role: Associate Director - Airport Sector Lead

Location: Bristol (preferable) / London / Harwell/ Manchester - Hybrid

Role ID: 2026 - 3319

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world.

Ricardo, member of WSP, is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

The Role

We are expanding our UK operations and are seeking an Associate Director to lead the delivery of environmental and water services within the airport sector.

In this senior position, you will play a key role in driving business growth through effective key account management, strengthening client relationships, and leading responses to tenders and new opportunities. You will oversee and manage a portfolio of existing projects while also shaping and delivering our airport sector strategy in line with Ricardo’s mission and vision.

You will lead an established team of environmental and water specialists, delivering a broad range of services including water quality risk assessments, contamination investigations, Environmental Statement chapters, discharge permitting, and regulatory engagement.

This role will involve collaboration with clients and project teams across the UK, with the potential for occasional international assignments. It offers significant responsibility, visibility, and the opportunity to shape your own career development.

Key Competencies And Experience

• Postgraduate degree level qualification in relevant environmental discipline.

In-depth understanding of the key environmental issues facing the UK water industry and airport sector, including PFAS / Regulation 61.

Proven technical skills in key topics such as water quality risk assessments, contamination investigations and environmental discharge permitting.

Experience of leading regulatory engagement with the EA/SEPA.

Proven track record in growing a business stream, with:

• Demonstrated proficiency in winning work.
• Strong client management skills with ability to engage and build relationships with contacts at all levels of an organisation.
• An appetite for business development.
• Broad understanding of environmental issues facing the airport sector.

An experienced people manager, with a track record of managing and developing teams of various sizes.

Confidence, initiative, enthusiasm, and be outgoing with excellent interpersonal and communication skills and the ability to liaise at all levels of business.

Working here

You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place. We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on. Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable.

Work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that is working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees to ensure an inclusive culture, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Benefits

We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health.

Next steps

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.

Ricardo is a Disability confident employer please advise the recruitment team via recruit@ricardo.com if you require any adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process.